Posted in: Games, Video Games | Tagged: bioware, Bioware Austin, knights of the old republic, star wars, star wars: Knights of the old republic

Is Bioware Working On A New Knights Of The Old Republic? Here's What We've Learned

There's a rumor springing up in the Star Wars community that Bioware, specifically Bioware Austin, is working on a new Knights of the Old Republic game. Specifically, that they're "prototyping it." Since Bioware announced a few months ago that they were working on a new sci-fi IP that sounded quite a lot like Bungie's Destiny, and are currently hiring for quite a few new positions in Austin, there just might be something to this rumor. After all, who wouldn't like a Destiny-esque KOTOR?

Now, for the significance of the Austin studio with Bioware, well, you may not have known that both Bioware Star Wars games – Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic and Star Wars: The Old Republic – were developed by Bioware Austin. Granted, the Austin studio is a pretty large one for Bioware, so that they're hiring for that location could be coincidental. It's everything combined that makes us think, "well, maybe." We do, after all, live in the world of intentional leaks. So this could be a way to gauge interest, of getting the news out by circumventing the usual channels, or it could be a project that was shelved. We did recently get some concept art from a game that is "never getting made" and seems to fit the Star Wars bill.

We tracked this rumor down thanks to SWGamesOutpost and it looks like the whole KOTOR reboot rumor comes down to one guy and got it's start last week. Games journalist Liam Robertson posted to his Patreon page saying, "I've learned now that [BioWare Austin is] pretty much now exclusively working on Star Wars games and they're going to be doing that for the indefinite future," he said during a podcast segment. "What they're currently working on right now—and I have this on good authority—is a sort of remake/revival of Knights of the Old Republic. I don't know when this is set to come out, but it has been in development for a little while now."

He then goes on to say, "I don't really know how that game'll end up," he said. "I've heard that it isn't exactly a remake anymore, but it started as a remake/revival. Now it's kind of going from that blueprint in sort of its own original thing. I guess we'll see what that turns out to be, but they are prototyping it right now." So this could be a reboot instead of a remake, or perhaps something entirely different, which, kind of sounds like Bioware's secretive new IP.

The transcriptions are coming from SWGamesOutpost because re-transcribing it just seems a bit too pedantic. If you don't want to take our collective word on it, well, get ready to fork over pocket money, since you have to donate at least $1USD to join Robertson's "early access/exclusives" list and gain access.

Last September, Jordan Maison, the editor-in-chief at Cinelinx, reported that a remake or remaster was in the works for KOTOR, however, that project was put "into stasis" by EA after internal issues. Which would match up with at least some of what Robertson's claiming now.

But if that all seems pretty suspect to you, and I can't say I blame you for that, we do have some other sources that could seem to give some legitimacy to Roberston's claim.

Things get interesting when you consider the following tweet from BioWare's Drew Karpyshyn, who was the lead writer on the first Knights of the Old Republic:

Sure, Karpyshyn could be working on absolutely any other game Bioware is working on, even the ones we don't yet know about. He did work on the first two Mass Effect games, after all, and Baldur's Gate. It's not like the man only writes Star Wars games. Though he worked on both KOTOR and Star Wars: The Old Republic, according to his online resume. So, you never know.

We've reached out to Bioware for a comment on this story, and they have yet to respond. We will update this story as we hear more.

For now, it's all just rumor, mostly coming from reporters rather than from devs. But hey, it's Star Wars Celebration this weekend, so we might hear something coming out of this week.

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